Samsung Galaxy S3 becomes the world’s best selling smartphone

For the six month old flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is still seeing strong sales and still breaking records in its wake. According to a report recently published by Strategy Analytics, the 3rd financial quarter saw the Korean handset fight off Apple’s competing iPhone to steal record sales internationally.

The report states that the in the last quarter alone, an impressive 18 million Samsung Galaxy S3 handsets were sold whilst just (relatively speaking) 16.2 million iPhone 4S units were shifted. The Galaxy S3 has seen great success across the globe thanks to impressive hardware such as its quad-core processor, the fact that it’s one of the first handsets to receive an upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, heavy marketing by Samsung globally and its mantle as flagship, taking over from another incredibly successful Android handset: the Samsung Galaxy S2.

"Samsung's Galaxy S3 has proven wildly popular with consumers and operators across North America, Europe and Asia," said Neil Mawston. The analyst did also state however that the uptake of the newer iPhone 5 will likely turn the tables back around when the financial impact of the handset is felt this quarter.

As The Inquirer points out, for the moment the Samsung Galaxy S3 is riding high, the 18 million units sold helped Samsung amass $7.8 billion profits in Q3 and they’re still pushing out new variations of the the phone, with UK retailer Clove now offering a black, 64GB handset to the consumers. It’ll be interesting to see how the battle rages on between the Galaxy and the iPhone 5 ahead of CES 2013, when a host of new device will appear to change the playing field even further.